Looking at a Time Machine in the Middle of Nowhere
by WeBuiltThePyramids
Summary: It's late at night, and it's been a long day.  Penny's stressed.  Leonard takes her to look at the stars.


**Something random I read today and a random fact thrown out by my physics teacher led to this.**

**I don't own anything.**

"Okay, Leonard, I'm all done," Penny said brightly as she came through the door into the beige-painted hallway.

Leonard put a hand up to silence her, and Penny put her hand to her mouth in apology when she realized that he was on the phone. "Yes, I'll be in at eight…uh-huh…I'd told Dr. Winkle that she was more than welcome to use the lab today…yeah…okay, well, I'll talk to you about it when I get in tomorrow. Uh-huh…"

Penny tried not to look impatient. True, it was after ten at night, they had more than an hour's drive to get back to Pasadena, and they'd been out since early morning, but it was clear that Leonard was on the phone with the University. He'd been scheduled to supervise an experiment today.

She hadn't known that when he and Sheldon had caught her crying in the laundry room three days before. She'd just received word that her audition for a play had been moved to a location twice the original distance from her house, and moved up by nearly a week. Her car was in the shop and she'd been walking to work-it had seemed impossible to still be able to go. When she'd told Leonard and Sheldon of this, Leonard had immediately offered to take her.

"Are you sure?" She'd asked, feeling a bit of hope.

"Yeah, it's no problem."

That had been his lying-through-his-teeth response. As Penny hadn't found out until the car ride this morning, Leonard had had to rearrange the schedules of half a dozen people in order to get the day off to take her. Despite him assuring her that it was no big deal, the calls he had been taking all day had led Penny to believe otherwise.

"Please tell me you didn't get yourself fired so I could audition to play the daughter of a Civil War soldier," she'd said to him when she'd brought him a hot dog and saw him hang up the phone with an irritable expression on his face.

He'd laughed. "I'm not fired. Kripke's just a little angry at me right now."

"Kripke?" That had made her feel just a little better.

Now, eight hours later, Leonard hung up the phone and smiled at her. "We ready to go?"

"Yep," she said, nodding. "I'm all set."

"So what did they say?"

She shrugged. "We'll see. They actually let me do the audition, which is better than about half the girls there. So I passed the first impressions test; we'll see how they liked me." She shrugged.

"That bad, huh?"

Penny sighed. "I know I didn't do half as good as some of the girls did." She pushed her hand through her hair as they crossed the parking lot to Leonard's car. "I can't sing and my acting isn't much better." _And it's my fault that people at your work are mad at you. _

"Don't worry about that," Leonard said, causing Penny to blink in surprise. She hadn't realized she'd said the last part out loud. "I have a secure job that I can count on, doing something I love. I can deal with a few people not being one hundred percent happy with everything I do if it means my friend gets a chance to do something that she loves."

"Thanks," Penny said, smiling at him. "But still…I've been here for years, going to countless auditions, and nothing's come of it." She looked away. "Maybe I need a new dream."

Beside her, Leonard leaned against his car and tapped his foot, thinking. Penny'd been working so hard lately, running to and from work, going to audition after audition, and when she did have time to relax, she did it in front of the television or playing video games with him and their friends. She didn't need a new dream; he was still trying to find success in his. She just needed to get her mind off of it for a while.

He straightened up. "Come on, get in the car. I have something to show you."

Penny's eyes lit up. "What?"

He smiled. "Just get in the car."

* * *

Leonard pulled out of the parking lot and turned right, taking them farther away from the city's lights. Penny kept asking him where they were going, but he just smiled and wouldn't say anything. It was after eleven o' clock when he stopped the car on the shoulder of a dirt road.

There were trees on the right side, blocking out the night sky except for the zenith, but on the left side of the road was just grass, an open field with a slight hill in the middle. "Come on."

"Where are we?" Penny questioned, removing her seat belt and exiting the car.

"The middle of nowhere," Leonard said.

They crossed the road. There was a wire fence running along the ditch, but time and weeds had twisted and bent it so that it was just shy of two feet high. Leonard stepped over it, then turned and offered Penny his hand. She took it, and carefully stepped over the fence, being careful not to catch her dress on the wire.

"Now follow me," Leonard said, walking toward the center of the field.

They reached the top of the gentle slope. On the other side was the rest of the field, leading into more trees. Penny looked at Leonard in confusion. "Why are we here?"

"It's August," he said. "The Perseids are here."

"Who?"

Leonard heard her, but he didn't want to answer Penny. He wanted to show her. Looking up at the sky, he slowly shook his head. "It's a little too early, still."

Penny had been looking at him, but now she turned her gaze upward, too. "I haven't looked at the stars since I was in Nebraska." She scanned the sky. "Is the North Star out this time of year?"

"The North Star is always out," Leonard said. "It's part of a circumpolar constellation, and they're out year round."

Penny nodded. "Okay, so where is it?"

Leonard put his hands on her shoulders and turned her slightly. "See right there? That's Ursa Major, the big dipper."

"So the North Star is…that one?" Penny pointed, and when Leonard shook his head, her eyes widened. "Wait, don't tell me! I remember how to find it." She turned back and looked up at the constellation again. "The two front stars in the Big Dipper-follow them…right there!"

"Yep!" Leonard grinned at Penny's excitement. "And from there, you can see Ursa Minor."

Penny turned her head and rolled her eyes playfully. "Can't you say 'Little Dipper'?"

"I'm a scientist. I say 'Ursa Minor'."

"Come on, either you lied to me when you told me about your train ride, or Raj himself said 'Big Dipper' when talking to Summer Glau. And he's an astrophysicist!"

Leonard tried to think of a comeback, but couldn't. "Okay."

That made Penny giggle. "Gotcha."

Leonard smiled back, feeling happy that he'd seemed to get her mind off of her audition.

Suddenly, Penny pointed behind Leonard, and he turned around. He saw nothing. "What was it?"

"A shooting star," Penny said. "It went just behind the trees." She shook her head. "Did you ever find it kind of… I don't know…eerie…knowing that as we speak a big flaming star is falling through space?"

"Nope," Leonard said. "Because it isn't. Not now anyway. Do you remember learning that it takes eight point three minutes for the sun's light to reach the earth?"

Penny nodded. "I didn't forget everything from school, you know!"

Leonard smiled. "Okay, well that's because the sun is eight light minutes away. Those stars…they're even farther away than that. That star could be a hundred light years away, meaning that the light you saw showed you an event that happened a century ago. Or, it could be even longer than that." He smiled at Penny's expression. He wasn't that great at social skills, even now, and at first he'd been worried about how she'd take to him showing her the sky-it was his sciency way of trying to help her, and he'd wondered if people like her could be as entranced by the stars as he was. He could see, now, the wonder on Penny's face as she took in the information. "We're looking at a time machine," she said, looking at him. The moon was going behind a stray cloud, so it was harder for them to see each other. "That's amazing." She looked up at the sky, shaking her head slowly. "I just…that's so cool! We're seeing something hundreds of years after it happened, but we're seeing it just as if it's happening before our eyes!" She dropped her head, a clear sign that she was trying to hide a blush. Leonard laughed inwardly; he could barely see her and wouldn't have known she was blushing if she hadn't moved her head. "I mean," Penny stammered, "I know that you know that. It's just…"

"It's still intriguing," he said, "even to me." He smiled at her in the dark, and after a moment movement caught his eye. "The meteor shower!"

"What?" Penny looked startled.

"The Perseids, remember? They're a meteor shower from Comet Swift-Tuttle that you can see at night in August. Look!" Leonard pointed , and Penny followed his arm up into the sky. A streak of light became visible for a few moments and then vanished. A few seconds later, another one showed itself.

"How far away are these?" Penny asked in wonderment.

"Not very," Leonard said. "They aren't very big, either. They're about the size of a grain of sand, shooting toward the earth. Then, to put it simply, they run out of gas before they can hit us, so they're not dangerous. We're too early in the year for the peak, and too early in the night to see them very clearly, but we can still…" He cut off and pointed. "There's another one!"

"How many are there?" Penny asked.

"A lot. If it's not cloudy and there aren't a lot of lights, you can see them every night for weeks around this time of year. Sometimes Raj brings us to this field so he can set up equipment and monitor the shower. We'll probably be doing that this weekend."

"Can I come?"

Leonard was pleasantly surprised. "Yeah, sure."

A breeze picked up, swinging across the field and causing Penny to shiver. Leonard looked to the west. "Clouds are coming in. Are you ready to go home?"

Penny looked longingly up at the sky. "Yeah," she said after a moment, with a regretful tone to her voice.

Leonard understood. It was hard to walk away from stargazing, especially when you just saw a meteor shower for what was quite likely the first time, but it was late, it was cold, and it had been a long day. "Okay, let's go."

They got back to the apartment building long after midnight and walked quietly to the fourth floor. Upon reaching it, Penny turned to Leonard and smiled. "I really appreciate you taking me to the audition today."

He almost said "no big deal," but he didn't want her to be feeling guilty again. Even if she hadn't realized what his reasons for taking her to the field were, they'd worked, and he didn't need her worrying about him again. "You're welcome," he said instead, smiling back. They looked at each other for a moment, and then Penny closed the distance between them and put her arms on his shoulders. Before Leonard could react, she put her lips on his.

Surprised, Leonard remained still for a second, and then put his hands on her waist and kissed her back. When they broke apart, she kept her face near his and smiled. He turned his head to the side ever so slightly and furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. "What was that for?"

Penny shrugged, holding his gaze. "Just…thank you. For everything."


End file.
